too long to remember, a trait that intimidated even hardened men. His facial features were simple but set in iron.
Tourists lucky enough to look up at just the right moment and see Nastas might think they’d gone back in time. “Look! Look!” one of them would say to their companions, pointing vigorously at the Indian man on horseback. With his legs hanging long without stirrups and an eagle feather in his hair, sitting perfectly still on some high bluff, Nastas looked like a “real Indian.” “No such thing,” another would contend, and both would soon forget the matter entirely.
As a teen, Nastas had spent many years fishing through his dead father’s voluminous possessions and writings, which his mother had kept perfectly preserved in the small hogan Ahiga had built to practice his private rituals. Ahiga had been killed in his hogan, and in keeping with Navajo tradition, no one was to enter it ever again. Nastas ignored his mother’s constant pleadings to stay out. He practiced Ahiga’s rituals daily, on weekends and after school, even sleeping in the cursed dwelling until his mother was truly unnerved.
On the day Nastas turned eighteen, his mother, a recent convert to Catholicism, begged him to take her to church, claiming that the car didn’t sound right and she was too worried to travel alone. Sleepily he agreed to take her. Because the church was twenty miles away, Nastas decided to wait for his mother while she prayed. She’d tried to appeal to his sense of duty to get him to attend services, but when he refused she produced a small cake with white icing and the inscription “Happy Birthday Nassie” in blue frosting script. Sitting at a picnic table at the rear of the church, Nastas closed his eyes and was quickly asleep, his head propped in his hands.
“Are you going to eat that?”
The voice belonged to a girl. Nastas heard the words without understanding them.
“Are you going to eat that? It won’t taste as good if you leave it in the sun.”
Nastas marveled at the blonde who was easily as tall as his six feet. Her tiny hands carefully removed the clear plastic cover from the cake.
“Is that you? Nassie?” She adjusted the straps on her brown halter dress.
“Nastas.” He felt himself turning a shade redder.
“What does it mean?”
“Mean?” His imperturbable features formed a question mark, not from her simple remark, but from her enigmatic aura of confidence.
“Don’t Indian names have meanings?”
Her manner was so candid that Nastas felt himself inching away.
“It means ‘foxtail.’” In truth, the full interpretation was “Curve like foxtail grass.” Nastas had never been asked for the meaning of his name before. All the Navajo already knew. The kids at his all-Navajo school preferred a different pronunciation, interpreted as “Curves like old man’s penis.” Nastas wasn’t sure why he just didn’t bother to tell her the whole thing. What did it matter?
“Like the foxtail weed?” the girl said cleverly.
When Nastas didn’t react, she settled her palms over the back of his hands. A white girl had never touched Nastas in such an intimate way; the feeling ramped up his insecurities. “I think it’s time for some of your cake. I don’t suppose it’s chocolate on the inside? The inside is what makes all the difference.” The girl obliterated the day in birthday as she drew icing onto her index finger. It disappeared into her mouth. “Delicious.”
Nastas’ bright green eyes widened explicitly. He curled his fingers into fists, causing the girl to withdraw her remaining hand. Still staring, and still fighting back the smile so foreign to his features, Nastas stood up awkwardly. The girl stood as well. Her arms hung heavy at her sides, but her fingers twitched with the obvious desire to reach out to Nastas, to soothe him with her touch.
Nastas shifted his gaze to the cake, bowed to the girl in lieu of a handshake, then stalked off to his mother’s car.
“My name is Natalia,” she yelled after him, “I know it’s stupid, but I’m here every Sunday. You’ll find me in God’s house when you need me.” Nastas did not look back and did not hear her final words, “…which will be sooner than you think.”
Almost a week passed.
Nastas had decided not to finish high school, resolving to spend all of his time ensconced in the heaps of his father’s life instead.
When his younger brother asked Nastas to take him to the store late Saturday afternoon, Nastas thought nothing of it. He loved Hasten, who needed no encouragement from anyone. He seemed unaffected by the loss of their father, and chose to love his mother for who she was, even if she’d abandoned their traditional beliefs.
Their car sped along the dirt road, CCR playing loudly through the remaining speaker.
“Thanks for doing this. I love you for it!” said Hasten.
Nastas would never forget Hasten’s last words or the drunk driver that appeared around the bend, an unpredictable missile that could not be evaded. Nastas swerved and hit a rock-filled embankment at sixty miles an hour. As Nastas’ head slammed into the steering wheel, Hasten’s neck twisted in just the wrong way, his C4 vertebrae breaking loose and sheering his spinal cord in two. He died instantly.
At the hospital, their mother was inconsolable. In a neighbor’s car, she sang during the long ride home, her words a haphazard mixture of Catholic influence and the Navajo ways she’d grown up with.
“God our Father,
Your power brings us to birth,
Your providence guides our lives,
and by Your command we return to dust.
Lord, those who die still live in Your presence,
their lives change but do not end.
I pray in hope for my family,
relatives and friends,
and for all the dead known to You alone.
In company with Christ,
Who died and now lives,
may they rejoice in Your kingdom,
where all our tears are wiped away.
Unite us together again in one family,
to sing Your praise forever and ever.
I give you this one thought to keep -
I am with you still - I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awake in the morning's hush
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled
